The Other Side of Orion
by brainchild
Summary: David Sheppard saw Atlantis for the first time in a dream, lighting up around his brother like a beacon. And John stood waiting for him at the end of a balcony, solitary and strong and leading his people through a war.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note**: Hello. This is my first SGA fanfic. I love the themes of family and home and journeying that this series played with, and mostly I just wanted to write a character study, but then it grew and grew and grew. And out of that one-shot that I meant to write, this story unfolded. It's been so much fun to write. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing. - Miranda

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Chapter 1

The first time David woke up in John's dream, neither thought much of it.

"Well where is this supposed to be?" David asked at first, glancing around at the shinny walls and empty hallways of a building he had never been in.

"Atlantis," John said easily.

"As in 'the lost city of'?" David leaned a bit to the right to see the end of the curving corridor, and found he couldn't. John and he were outside what might have been an MIT lab filled with computers and whiteboards and equations on the walls, and there were more than a dozen around them, not to mention the bright, artificial lights. "Seems a bit modern for an ancient civilization."

John smiled like he had a secret. "You'd be surprised."

David poked his head into the empty lab. It looked strangely alien, despite the familiar buzzing technology. "If you had this many computers at your disposal, the lack of e-mails seems intentional."

And as if he had been waiting for just such an opportunity to arise, John too-casually said, "It's an alien settlement on a distant planet. We were cut off from Earth for a year, and now only communicate bi-weekly."

David resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Convenient."

With his flyboy grin, John stuck his hands in his pockets—a black sweatband over the scar on his wrist. "Yep."

"Were you ever really in Antarctica?" David asked as they began to walk through the strange, bending corridors, with light spilling in from large planes of windows, and a comforting hum reverberating through the building.

"Oh, yeah. For a couple of months," John said, his arms swinging easily by his sides, his gait casual for the first time in years around David. It was unsettling. "I liked it."

"You would," David said, stopping to look out the diamond-shaped window at the bright day beyond, where spires of metal glistened in the light and an _ocean _moved. "This seems more interesting."

"It is," John said, and maybe because this was a dream, he explained about stargates and Pegasus and jumping into another galaxy. He talked about a shimmering puddle of water that was a wormhole that was a ticket to the future—or the past, depending whose story you were listening to—and finding this whole city under an ocean. He talked about it rising, and the people he'd met, and how the universe was bigger than he had ever known.

His enthusiasm—the kind he had shown as a kid ripping open Christmas presents, and holding toy cars in the air like trophies—made David smile nostalgically. "Mom always said you'd race across the universe if you could."

His brother froze momentarily as they stood by that window, as if he was only just remembering that. "She did."

They remained at that window for a long time, watching the planet in the dream that was not earth.

They had always been comfortable with silence, the pair of them. They had driven across the country when David was twenty-two and just finished with college, speaking maybe every other state. John sang along to the radio at odd intervals, and mostly teased David about following the speed limit. They talked about Texas being too big, and decided Nebraska was the most forgettable state, and Iowa the most boring. John made them stop at all of the corny state attractions, and David still has the picture of them standing on the crossroads where four states met, taken with one of the dozen disposable cameras John had picked up at gas stations.

But it was David who broke the quiet, eyes still straight ahead as he asked the question he had not dared to voice in twenty years. It made him feel vulnerable. "You coming home ever?"

"I am home," John said, every bit as confident and comfortable as he had been the day he finished his final exams at college and signed up to join the Air Force. David was filled with such strange, foreign happiness for his brother that he didn't have emotion to spare on old hurt.

It had been a long time since David had thought about his brother, let alone thought of him without bitterness and longing. It was oddly nice to imagine him on a distant, ancient planet, happy at last, a thousand light years away.

The next three nights, David dreamed of John and Atlantis, appearing suddenly beside his brother on a pier, or in another corridor, and spending hours wandering the city, watching that ocean. It was empty except for them, and should have felt lonely, but never did. Still, on the third night, David admitted, "I'm starting to think I'm going mad, dreaming this place every night."

"It's crazier to really be here," John assured him, sitting on the edge of a balcony, his feet dangling over the water. The sea stretched to forever, and the moons were barely visible in the bright blue sky

"You remember that trip to Hawai'i the year after I graduated from high school?" David asked, leaning against the rail beside his brother.

"Oh yeah." The self-satisfied grin just oozing into his tone. "With the girls from California."

After biking to the top of the mountain at dawn and surfing all morning and swimming out to a floating dock, John had lay on the beach with Dave and their parents and fallen asleep, content.

"I always wondered if that was secretly the reason you went to Stanford, because you loved it so much there. The ocean and the mountains and the surfing and everything," David said, letting himself crouch down to sit beside his brother. "Aside from the usual reason of pissing Dad off."

"I didn't do it to piss Dad off," John said without rancor, looking more relaxed than David had seen him in years. The most relaxed he had ever been when talking about their dad.

"I know." It had been a poor joke, apparently.

John just raised a doubtful eyebrow, shooting David a look. "You do?"

"Yes," David said, because it was true. "You did it for the same reason you wouldn't play golf competitively. Same reason you joined the Air Force instead of taking the Oxford scholarship."

John twisted to lean his shoulder against the rail. "How are golf and the Air Force the same thing?"

"You did them for the challenge, not the reward," David said, feeling pretty eloquent. "Because rewards meant you were done with something, and that's when you'd abandon it."

John, his eyes hard and honest, said, "I'm not doing that anymore."

"Well, I would hope it would be hard to be bored by a mythical lost city being rediscovered," David said, waving a hand out toward the rest of the city, letting humor lighten the subject. "And filled with futuristic gizmos only you can control."

"Don't forget the space vampires," his brother said, probably because it sounded cool, but there was more to that story than he was sharing in his joking asides. Something about an enemy that scared him. Scared anyone who thought about them-a glowing, white space vampire who wanted nothing more than to take that which made you human. But that was a touchy subject, apparently, and the brothers had never pushed each other for answers, so David let it go without comment. It was a Sheppard family gift: letting you hide the thing that meant the most to you, never prying.

The city was lighting up around them, empty but warm, humming with life and energy, and a voice was whispering in David's mind to talk. Talk to John.

"What are you doing out here?" David asked, nodding at the towering, glittering city behind them.

John sighed, sardonic. "Waiting to wake up."

"This isn't a place for waiting," David said, as if the words had been premade for him, the idea imprinted onto his heart. This city was a place of home and action and walking and fighting and _learning_. Not waiting. It had waited ten-thousand years to rise. It was done waiting.

"I know," John said, his hands wrapped tightly around the metal railing. The metal buzzed with life, and the waves matched the rhythm of John's breathing. Above them the sky darkened into dusk, and the air smelled like faith and the sea.

It felt like they were sitting on the edge of Neverland.

"Hey John," David said, the thought occurring to him quite comfortably as he tilted his head back to look at the stars, "is this place real?"

The whole area warmed when John smiled. "Oh yeah."

()()

The next day at work, David Googled 'Atlantis,' 'two moons,' and 'space vampires.' Then 'John Sheppard' and the word that echoed in the back of his mind, near that whispering voice: 'Alterans.'

The day after that, General Franklin Stackhouse showed up at David's office with a stiff handshake and a few questions, dressed in full uniform, as he had been at Dave's father's funeral, when they had last spoken. He asked for fifteen unscheduled minutes, and despite the panicked look in his secretary's eyes, David ushered him inside with a nod.

After the faux pleasantries were done, Stackhouse asked, "Have you talked to you brother recently?"

"No. Not since the funeral," David said, and the silence afterward rumbled between them. David was a better poker player than the general ever had been, better at pretending not to care, better at waiting to see the other person's hand before making his move. His father's friend Frank knew that, and began.

"We want to know what you've been hearing about him, and how," Frank said, and David kept every reaction hidden.

"Nothing, mostly."

The general's eyes went to the computer. "You sure about that?"

Fair. Creepy, of course, that they could know about his research, but fair.

"I've heard rumors." Whispers. Dreams as clear as the view from deck over the mountains on a mid-summer day after the rain.

"We need you to tell us the truth."

"Why?" The truth hadn't been part of his relationship with John in years. It hurt too many people.

"Because we were told to ask you." He didn't seem to like that answer any more than David.

"By whom?"

"An ally."

"That's vague."

The General nodded, sighed, and said, "He's your brother."

Yes, a brother who flew so fast and far that they lost all ties except for mediocre lies about being safe and fighting for a good cause. A writer of short, cliché letters that never said as much as the look in his eyes when he came home, the distance between them growing insurmountable. Until recently. Until Atlantis rose through the water and into David's head one night and seemed stuck. Until John sat with David on the edge of his home and talked of greatness.

A few years ago, when there were two Sheppard boys who ruled the southern high society, David would have already been out the door with the general. They both knew that. But now he was in an office on the top floor of a building that needed him to keep running. With a wife and small daughter at home, waiting for him.

Yet there was a question he needed answered, one he tucked carefully away in a memory of metal and water: was Atlantis real?

"He needs you now," the general said, his serious eyes on David.

"Unless he needs his utilities contracts examined or a marketing campaign approved, I don't know what I help I could be to him," David said. "And I imagine the United States Air Force has people for that."

The general had been working his way through a script in his head until that moment, when he understood that half-promised and vague clues weren't invoking Dave's compassion.

"We need you brother," he said, his deep voice sincere, "and he needs you. That needs to be enough for now."

On the top floor of the building his father built, wearing an Armani suite that he been tailored for him, David felt like he was on the edge of that city again, looking out at the horizon with a warm voice asking him to listen, to obey. A strange pulsing feeling in his chest beckoning him forward, beckoning him toward this uncertain promise of answers.

So David pushed down all his other feelings about this request, and asked, "What do you need me to do?"

()()


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** It will be readily apparent in this chapter that I am inserting this story into mid season four. There is a reason for that, though it shouldn't alter the story. Thanks for your reviews, and please let me know if you have any other questions! Miranda

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**Chapter Two**

It took two days of tests and three weeks on a spaceship before David Sheppard stepped foot on Atlantis outside of his dreams. And when he finally did, the lights went out.

A woman with authority said, "Rodney," as if it were a command, and maybe it was, because a moment later an annoyed man replied.

"I know. I know. I'm on it."

But the seconds passed and nothing changed except for David's eyes adjusting as he looked up through a glass wall to see the stars of another galaxy. He had the crazy thought to make a wish, and felt a breeze curl around him, warm and comforting.

Were there names for these constellations? Were there stories of bears and twins and a warrior standing guard?

David had arrived in the middle of the night after his journey on a ship called the Daedalus, which he loved for the irony. _About suffering they were never wrong_, David had quoted to himself as he sat for the first time on the simple bed that was his for the trip. There was no Brueghel painting on the walls, but the Daedalus still conjured thoughts of boys who flew too close to the sun.

Then the lights were on again, and people were talking, so David paid attention. The commander of the Deadalus was formally greeting the blonde-haired Colonel Samantha Carter, the commander of this base and a former member of the stargate's flagship team, the four-man team who had saved the world in secret.

"You must be Mr. Sheppard," she said, turning. Her handshake was strong and decisive. "Welcome to Atlantis."

"Thank you," he said, letting his gaze wander through the atrium to the doorways beyond and the office above. To the stairs that he knew would light up as he walked on them. He considered being concerned about the accuracy of his dreams, but decided it wasn't worth it.

"Yeah, yeah," said the man beside her, waving his hands to indicate that this should be moving faster. "Sheppard—our Sheppard—is still in a coma. Let's go. And stop turning off the lights, you."

David liked him instantly, and only found that fact odd a few days later.

"I didn't turn off the lights," David said, following him into the hall.

"Please. You don't think I recognize a Sheppard move? No one else could have turned off the whole control room by accident_." Dr. Rodney McKay is never wrong_, one of the men on the Daedalus told David. _It's exactly as annoying as it sounds_.

"You've been briefed on the situation regarding your brother," Colonel Carter cut in, asking the question in the way that most military people did: like it was an order.

"Yes," David said, eying the building that lit up around him—doors that opened before he reached them, lights that brightened in the cool, metal halls. They took for granted the way the building molded around their needs.

Introductions happened during the walk, before Colonel Caldwell broke off with his men to return to their ship, leaving David with his brother's co-workers: two aliens, two geniuses, and a city full of people that either had multiple doctorates, a hero complex, or both. Most had handguns, too.

"Here, here, sit," said Dr. Rodney McKay—a man who transformed physics with diligent, thoughtful work so brilliant that he should have received multiple Nobel prizes. Except Dr. McKay's work was buried behind hundreds of pages of security clearance. How strange to be a revolutionary genius and not be able to share it. How heart wrenching.

Having nodded for David to sit on the tall, metal stool in the office they finally reached, Dr. McKay set about turning on a lot of bright machines. He seemed to need some sort of sedative, yet everyone around him reacted to his occasional twitches and outbursts with practiced ease, so David accepted that he was fine.

"Where's my brother?"

McKay waved his finger at David. "I've looked into you. FBI, NSA databases. We have access, you know."

"You could have just Googled me," David said. His life wasn't a particularly secretive one.

"I know you're friends with the president of a company that deals in health care research using technologies we provide," Rodney was really off on a roll now, but David couldn't keep himself from running his fingers along the edge of the table and watching as the strange objects light up under his touch.

"Rodney," Ms. Emmagen said, sounding pained.

"No, he needs to know that I know that he can benefit from—"

"I'm not here for money," David said, interrupting the doctor. "I think what you do is remarkable, but I'm here for my brother."

"Right," Rodney said, still mutinously. "Don't bother pretending to be dumb, either. It didn't fool me with Sheppard, and it won't fool me with you."

"I'm not as smart as John." Never had been.

"Well, we're all geniuses here," Rodney muttered before he began tapping away with his angry, stout fingers on what looked like a touch-screen laptop. Finishing with a little extra pizzazz, he looked up expectantly at the wall behind him as the entire area lit up with pictures, names, dates. It looked like one of a conspiracy wall on a TV show.

Amid the photos and data, David saw ones he knew instantly: his mother sometime in her thirties, his father in the publicity shot they'd put up on the website in the early days. He saw John's ex-wife and a series of old school friends of John's. He also saw a lot of the people in this room, and one woman with a UN badge on a blue jacket.

"What is all this? I thought my brother was ill, not being investigated." The bite in David's words surprised even him, but he wouldn't let himself look contrite. Family was a private business that this group had no right to dig into.

"Mr. Sheppard," Colonel Carter said before Rodney could verbalize the indignation splattered all over his face, "the dreams you've been sharing may hold the key to waking Colonel Sheppard up, and we need as much information as you can give us on the things he's been showing you."

"I've compiled profiles on all the most likely people and places to show up," Rodney said. "Just tell us which memories you see when you're floating around there, and we'll—"

"We don't go through his memories," David said, surprised that they thought they would. He was certain he hadn't mentioned anything like that.

"We were told you saw Atlantis," Carter said, and David appreciated her straightforward answers.

"Yes. This place. Empty except for him and me." David thought of days spent wandering this city with his brother as John talked about puddle jumpers and dial home devices and lights that turned on just because he wished they would.

"Then we'll have to monitor you when you sleep to…" Carter said, going on and on about words David didn't know. Being CEO had taught him how to parse information. "We don't want to take any chances, so Rodney and a few others will debrief you every morning."

"I want to see my brother."

Everyone in the room did a quick eye exchange except for Teyla, who nodded briefly.

"I'll take him," Ronon said, his deep voice so different than everyone else's, rumbling with the sound an oncoming fight, the memory of a chase so long and intense that he couldn't remember what it was like to stand still and breathe. And for a moment, as if he had been pulled out of this room and its dealings, David wanted nothing more than to let Ronon Dex rest.

There had been a conversation that was really an argument happening while David spaced out—a rarity—but Ronon ended up being the one to lead him to the infirmary.

The hallways were quiet and metallic and should have felt like a prison, but even in the middle of the night on this planet, warmth radiated from the walls, and the ground felt like it was pushing him on. The constant smell of the sea and soft pounding of waves swelled around them.

"So. Civilian contractor?" David asked, thinking back on John's absurd cover for this dreadlocked giant at their father's funeral.

Ronon shrugged. "I guess."

"You're close to John?" David asked, mostly because casual acquaintances didn't go to family funerals with people.

"I guess."

David had thought he knew how to bridge the gap between them—diplomacy was a skill much used in the Sheppard household—but Ronon didn't want to talk about John. Didn't want to talk in general. So David stopped speaking and let the unexpectedly soft sound of their footsteps lead them on.

Until suddenly, Ronon said, "Don't tell them new stuff."

"What?" David turned to look at him, but Ronon's eyes remained forward.

"The stuff they don't know and you do, don't tell them. About Sheppard," Ronon said, glancing sideways at him with those eyes, deep set and dark brown, serious and angry and compelling all at once. David found himself nodding, thinking of his secretive, private brother. And thinking about what fickle, brilliant John could have done to earn Ronon's loyalty.

A nurse in her late thirties greeted them at the door with a nod, but she moved aside once Ronon told her who David was. She looked at him with none of the kind sympathy David expected in hospitals, but instead with a quick, assessing look as if to see how much trouble he would cause, and whether she could deal with it herself. It was clear in the way she turned slightly and paused between them and the curtain that she was a gatekeeper for John.

"May I?" David asked, nodding to just beyond the curtain, where he could see his brother flat on his back, a small, black triangle machine pulsing beside him.

The nurse nodded again, ever watchful, so David stepped past her on the shinny, solid floors of Atlantis, and stood beside his brother for the first time in a year.

What a mess. What a sad state.

Without consciously choosing to do so, David slipped his jacket off and settled into the chair, stiff and formal, with the posture he'd kept since etiquette class when he was seven. The posture John so effortlessly morphed into a slump.

They left him alone, as if either he or his brother were the type to talk to someone unconscious. No, he just sat there quietly, watching the rise and fall of his brother's chest, and tried to ignore the memories of sitting beside John a decade ago doing the same for their mom.

What was he even doing here? David wondered, all of the suppressed emotions he'd been tucking away twisting out of him. This wasn't fair. This wasn't right. David shouldn't be sitting in this chair beside a brother who didn't give two damns if he was there. He shouldn't be made to care again about the brother who hadn't cared about him. Who had walked away after the funeral—_both _funerals. Who had been reckless and selfish and uncommunicative and--

And living in a floating, alien spaceship city.

All the righteous indignation that David had scooped up over the past years evaporated: John hadn't ignored the e-mails about Dad; John hadn't been hiding himself away to avoid them; John hadn't been unbelievably selfish for no reason. He was out here, a galaxy away, trapped and saving lives and somehow earning the loyalty of men who would follow no one else. He'd been being a hero, apparently, which trumped being a brother, no matter how much that hurt.

So David sat there with all of this warring in his head, the steady rhythm of the machine thrummed beside him, solid and soft in the ancient city.

--


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER 3**

"I'm in your city now," David said while he slept that night.

John gave him a sidelong look. "You've been here for a while."

"No. Outside this dream. I'm here with you and Ronon and the others." David paused. "They brought me here to help you. On an ironically named spaceship."

John glanced at him as they climbed a set of stairs. "Carter and the IOA wouldn't bring you all the way from Earth just to see if you might be able to help me."

David rolled his eyes. "John, if those people thought it was necessary, they would have found a way to bring Dad back from the dead to save you."

The tense silence ended with John saying, "Sorry I dragged you into this."

"You didn't. I came because I wanted to." Why did he always think David was such an invalid?

"Right." John stuck his hands in his pockets, and that part of the conversation was done. Done like their discussion of Dad, the memory of Mom, and the words exchanged so angrily nearly five years before. They were a quiet family after Mom died, and they were probably the worse for it. But David didn't have the energy to bridge that gap now any more than he had the last time he saw his brother, even if the anger had abated. But the soothing, insistent feeling in the back of his head would not let that silence linger.

"They're good people, your friends." David waved his hands around, trying to indicate the multitudes who lived in the city.

"Watch out for McKay," John said, as if McKay weren't one of his best friends, as if David hadn't yet heard the story of how his brother had been thrown forward forty-eight hundred years, only to find Dr. Rodney McKay waiting for him, having given up his life to bring his friend back. As if McKay weren't John's family now, with Ronon Dex and Teyla Emmagen.

"You finally found a group of people as smart as you," David said, smiling softly. "I never thought you would."

"Oh, that's nice," John muttered, but there was no rancor there.

"I mean it. Physicists, doctors, the best in the world." People who gave up their planet and homes to live in a world so far away they thought they could never return. Because they thought what they were jumping toward was worth it. What a culture that must have created: the smartest people in the world and their military protectors, all brave enough to make that one-way jump. "Is that why you were recruited?"

"I wasn't really recruited," John admitted. "I was sort of tacked on at the end because a chair lit up for me."

"That seems like an arbitrary reason to send a man into another galaxy."

"They needed someone with the gene," John said, that shit-eating grin spreading across his face. "I finally had the right stuff."

"Still. They shouldn't have been able to force you to come out here." No matter that it became his home. No matter what it gave him. It was ordering a man toward possible death.

"It wasn't exactly an order," he said after a pause. "It was more like a request."

"You voluntarily came out here?"

"Wouldn't you?" John asked as they reached the top of the stairs and stood in the tallest tower.

"You didn't know it would be like this," David said, thoroughly thrown. "They said the first group thought this might have been a one-way trip."

John cast his eyes to the window overlooking the south pier. "Yeah, they mentioned that."

"But still you went." Without a single call or letter. "How long did it take you to decide to possibly throw your life away?"

John kept walking. "About the course of a single conversation."

"Must have been a hell of a conversation."

His brother had that look in his eyes again—the hard, angry, confident look that David associated with him and their father. It was a look that foretold a lot of fights. "It was."

And as if seeping through the sky itself, David heard. _"It's a chance at a new beginning, Major."_

"_I've had enough new beginnings, Doctor. And I like Antarctica."_

"_You'll like this more."_

"_You don't even know what's on the other side of that thing."_

"_Exactly. It's a world of possibilities. A galaxy of unknowns where we could uncover the knowledge of the race who invented the stargates."_

"_And never come back."_

"_Major, please don't pretend like that isn't the most enticing part for you."_

"_Is that why you're recruiting me? You think I've got no other options?"_

"_No. I already have one military commander coming because he feels he has to. I want you to go because I saw you when you sat on that chair, and pulled up the diagram of the solar system. You looked like a man who found something he was searching for. I want you to go because I think you'll regret it if you don't."_

The woman's voice was sure and confident and full of sincere wonder when she spoke of the possibilities of the gate. She was articulate and thoughtful, and just the right amount of forceful when dealing with John. Without even having to ask, David knew this woman had meant something to John, just as he knew the moment in the conversation his brother had been convinced.

"When was that?" David asked.

"What?"

"The conversation with the doctor?"

John froze for a moment, as if he hadn't realized David heard that, but said, "A few months after I got to Antarctica."

"And how many months after your friends died?" David asked seriously.

John's entire body tensed. "What are you talking about?"

"Mitch and Dex," David said automatically, because he was good with names, and the surprise on his brother's face when he realized that was worth it.

John nodded, coming back to himself. "Fourteen months."

And just from John's tone, David knew his brother could list it to the day, if he were asked to.

"And how long after Rebecca?" David asked, nodding at the black wristband that never left his brother's arm in this dream world. Beside his carefully packaged bitterness and hurt surrounding his relationship with John was a deep, angry river of empathy and compassion so profound it hurt to think about. Maybe it was pity, too. No one should be that willing to chase death.

Again, John paused, but this time, he turned to look his brother in eye. "When did you get so nosy?"

"About the time I woke up in your dreams."

"Well… stop it," John grunted.

David smiled ruefully and without humor. He had learned through what amounted to local legend that everyone first knew John because of his gene, but then he became defacto leader of the expedition when their old one died, and quickly became the guy to go to in an emergency, the guy that scaled the walls of the city to protect the people and had even died for them once. The word sacrifice came up a lot around his name.

But now David was looking at his brother, wondering what sort of man it took to earn the respect of marines and scientists who ran voluntarily into the unknown for no other reason than discovery. John had always been the kind of guy people were drawn to—jocks, nerds, and everyone in-between—but this was a different level.

"Who had that conversation with you?" David asked, wondering how this really began.

"More questions?" John asked, clearly exasperated. But David was no longer a child, and he didn't hide from his brother.

"Who was she?"

John and David had finally arrived at the roof, where a bag of golf clubs waited for them, and he slowly took out a driver while David waited.

"Dr. Weir."

She's gone, his tone said.

They spent the dream hitting golf balls off the roof and into the distant water, silent but for the ping of metal.

* * *

Major Lorne brought David to breakfast that day, where people kept watching David. _That's the colonel's brother, _they would whisper. _He has a brother?_ others would ask, which was always a treat.

The strangers looked at him with tight, cautious hope, hope that he would be as special as his brother and fix what seemed impossible. The cook gave him an extra scoop of blue potatoes, and told him that everyone was pulling for the colonel. The scientists caught their breath and looked at David for too long before forcing themselves to look away.

They couldn't lose John, their eyes said; it would crush them.

"He was the one that brought us here," Dr. Zalenka explained in his soft, friendly accent. David felt strangely protective of him.

Miko, who was beautiful and delicate and good at translating Zalenka, nodded. "Your brother flew us down to the base in Antarctica, where this work started and before he knew what we were doing. He has always moved us safely. Carefully."

That sounded nothing like John, who hadn't been gentle since their mother's death, and before that only with her.

"He always liked to fly," David said diplomatically.

"Then he turned on the lights," the third man—Parish, Botany—said. "It was incredible. He would just walk into a room, and the city would light up, open up. Like it had been waiting for him, and it could breathe again."

"It let us stay because we were his guests, some think," Zalenka said.

That kind of romanticism would have driven John crazy. At least, the fact-and-numbers John that David had known growing up.

But he had changed without David noticing, and perhaps that was the barrier between them at their dad's funeral: he had expected John to be the person he had been, rather than the one Atlantis made him.

David has always been good with people—his one, true Sheppard talent, he always thought—but never with John. The irony was not lost on him.

Leaving the mess hall, David turned to Lorne. "John can't be comfortable with all this hero-worship, can he?"

He hadn't even been able to sit through David's best man speech without cracking a joke.

Lorne smiled a crypt smile. "I try to shield him from most of it, but being friends with Dr. McKay keeps his ego in check."

Yes, David could see how the brash, relentless scientist could do that.

"You do more than that." They said Sheppard kept them safe, but Lorne kept them running.

"Sure. We try to keep the Colonel away from all but a city-wide crisis."

"That's thoughtful."

There was that smile again. "It's when he's best."


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note**: Thanks for all of the reviews. I appreciate them all. I started this story as a one-shot, which was mostly based on this chapter, but it kept getting bigger and bigger. That's why (and I apologize for it) the chapters are so short. I mostly wanted to explore the relationship between the brothers, and what it would have been like for David to learn about the stargate program. I also wanted him to see the man his brother became. Anyway, here's the newest chapter. -- Miranda

* * *

**Chapter four**

David calmly sat on the clean white linen sheets across from his comatose brother as a pretty young doctor named Jennifer Keller— one of the youngest graduates of John's Hopkins, and the youngest McArthur Award winner—explained exactly how she was going to help make sure David's head wasn't about to explode.

"You won't be in any danger," she assured him in her soft, thin voice. "We're just going to monitor you as you sleep."

"And hope I don't end up in a coma like my brother?" David asked smoothly. It was ridiculous to assume any of them had any control in this situation.

"Well, yes," she said, and doubt crept into her voice for the first time.

"Oh, suck it up," McKay said, which he had every right to. He had done more for John than risk a coma. "We need to know if you're actually in contact with him."

"Just go to sleep like any other night," Keller instructed, a bit awkwardly.

But there was an unscheduled off world activation, and Rodney had to go take care of that while David remained there, trying to dream.

"Do you know my brother well?" David asked, bored and unable to rest as Keller set the equipment.

Keller seemed surprised by the question. "We work together a lot, as department heads, and because he tends to get hurt offworld."

"But you're not friends?"

She seemed a little embarrassed. "Not really."

Which wasn't that surprising to David, who had been expecting the answer. Not because Keller wasn't good at her job, but because David wondered how uncomfortable it was for his brother to submit to the care of a pretty, brown-haired doctor again.

It turned out the emergency off world activation wasn't so simple, because an alarm sounded; there was an attack or threat of some kind that required attention _right now_. So the experiment was delayed, and Dr. Keller was rushing around, and David went to the atrium to see if there was anything he could do.

People kept glancing around in the control room, no doubt looking for John, who was still unconscious, and would be pissed to know he'd missed a call about a wraith attack.

"Does this happen often?" David asked, leaning slightly to the right to watch Major Lorne's team rush through the stargate.

Chuck, who knew everything and never seemed to leave his post, nodded. "Fairly often, yes."

"And you all just rush to face this enemy?"

"Sometimes these emergencies are more natural, but we always go to help the survivors of any kind of disaster. Colonel Sheppard's orders."

"My brother's always been good at running toward trouble," David said lightly enough that no one would hear the bitter truth.

"And fixing it," Chuck said, loyalty etched into his words like all of the first-arrivals. The newer staff spoke mostly with awe about John.

Ronon Dex and Dr. McKay went through the gate, too. The first because he had a grudge a mile wide and a thousand feet deep. The second because he was arrogant and brilliant enough to know he could help. Teyla Emmagan went with them, her hands empty but purposeful.

And Colonel Samantha Carter stood rigidly at the top of the stairs that night, her blue eyes narrowed on the stargate, as if she could see through the light-years to the world beyond, where Evan Lorne and his team were saving people for no other reason than that they felt they should.

* * *

After the team returned and everyone was shuffled off to the infirmary or their rooms or a meeting to debrief, David went back to the bed beside John's in the infirmary, and wondered why his brother wouldn't wake.

He didn't notice Teyla enter until she took the empty seat across from him, sitting as gracefully as she walked and fought, no doubt. She was pretty and exotic, and David liked that everything in her demeanor toward John suggested friendship. No strings. No sex. No hidden agenda. A rational friend. John had never had many of those.

"I'm glad you're okay," David said, bending their silence.

"As am I," she said with that easy, small smile before her attention returned to John. One of their team was constantly with him--Ronon in his silence, Rodney chattering as if it would jolt him into waking, or Teyla with her soothing presence.

It was unnatural, the way John didn't move. The way his breathing hardly shifted his chest, and David could not stand another hour of staring at him without helping.

"You were the leader of your people before you came here," David said, needing to fill the void in his head where fear grew.

"Yes," Teyla said, inclining her head. "What do you do in your community, David?"

"I run a company that our dad started," David said, his hand waving toward the cool metal of John's bed. "It should have been John's job. It was meant to be."

"John Sheppard was meant to be here."

Here where? Here a galaxy away from the cars and horses they had raced as headstrong kids? Here a million miles from the small planet where Fortune Five-Hundred meant power and their last name meant respect? Here where space vampires attacked entire worlds and nano technology could rip into your mind with ease?

Maybe.

Maybe this was the only place that could fit his brother. The place where everyone stopped holding him back, and just watched how high he could fly, no one to tell him his wings were made of wax, because Deadalus was back at home.

David had thought John was insane when he walked away from the business their father was practically kicking at him—a multi-million dollar company where John could work until he finally ran for office. _A face like that_, their father always said, _you could be president_. He hadn't expected any less.

But to John the expectations had been a prison sentence, keeping him still too long. David's brother had always—always—wanted to go faster, do more. Had never listened to _sense_.

"Is he a good leader?" David asked Teyla, looking into her sincere, open face.

"Yes," she said, sounding both surprised and curious that David didn't know that.

"Really?" He had seen his brother lead before, seen his natural gift for it, but it was always something John had done unconsciously, and sometimes, when he wasn't careful, that had created problems.

"Your brother has a gift for envisioning the world as he feels it ought to be, and inspiring it to be that way, no matter how improbable it seems." Which was a beautiful and completely vague idea. "He is the reason I am here. And Ronon. And the reason my people have time to hope."

"I always thought that John would come home and takeover the company when he finally grew tired of his rebellion, prodigal son and all that." The reference wasn't one she would know, but the idea was understood.

"This is his home," Teyla said, which David had known that since his first dream of John all those weeks ago.

But even now it was hard for David to imagine that John—brilliant, daring, hyper John—had actually found something that caught his interest for once. A place to funnel his intensity. He was too fleeting for that, too smart. He mastered a concept and moved on, stumbled his way up the chain of command, a colonel despite all his mistakes. Gaining accolades and brushing them aside because, as ever, John was jumping on to the next thing.

Hell, he'd turned down Harvard for Stanford just because none of their family had gone there. Met a beautiful senator's daughter there, received straight As, won a math fellowship at Oxford, but took a job in the Air Force instead. And while his interest in both his studies and his wife waned, the military stuck.

"He loves it here," David said quietly, because it was true.

This place was pure John, the brother with whom David had skied, driven across the country, gone to camp, chased after girls, pulled pranks, and wasted away a childhood of careless privilege. Resting his head in his hands, David couldn't help but think of all the times when he had wanted to go back to those easy days—times when work became too much of a burden, when their father sat quietly on the deck overlooking their lake, sad and regretful without saying a word.

David was never enough to make up for John, whom people loved and trusted before handshakes broke. He probably _could_ have been president if he had just listened to their father a day in his life.

But John had left, they thought, to a life of military and fighting. A line of work so secretive that even the Sheppard name could only warrant bits of information—hints that it was important, dangerous, Not to Be Talked About.

They had thought it was a fleeting interest like the rest. Good for a political career eventually. No one had anticipated just how good John would be as a soldier, how much he would love flying, though David later thought it should have been obvious to them.

At Christmas years ago, when John grew too restless to keep sitting at the table listening to the chatter between his savvy wife and approving father, John nodded at the door and walked with his brother around the grounds and told him about flying, about speed and adrenaline and being the best.

"Sounds interesting," David had said blandly, trying to put out the fire that had burned in his brother as long as they had been alive, that made him run when everyone else wanted to walk.

"It's more than that," John said, tripping over his own enthusiasm and tying up his own words. "I make a difference out there. It's not like sitting in an office looking at numbers."

That had stung, but David had learned to bury his bitterness about his brother's cavalier attitude. So David remained the good son his whole life, went to Princeton, got his business degree, took over the company. John disappeared.

But sitting across from Teyla Emmagen in that city on the water, David wished he could meet her John—that one who flew suicide missions at a Wraith spaceship to save the city; the one he became after Mom died and Dad had said those things he hadn't meant. The man on the other side of Antarctica.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

"I want to go flying with you," David announced in the dream that night, and John just tilted his head in that way he did when he was trying to finish a puzzle.

"Really?"

"Dr. Zalenka made it sound interesting," David said, not wanting to repeat the exact phrase Dr. Zalenka had used about John and flying, about beauty and air and _home_. About how understanding John required context and the sky.

"Alright," John said, glancing around as if someone might be watching them in this empty, thrilling version of the city, where the walls whispered when they were going the wrong direction, and doors opened just a fraction earlier than in real life. Where there was a constant, wonderful warmth, and the smell of the ocean permeated every surface.

"This is the puddle jumper," John said when they reached the metal boxes that had two comfortable seats up front and a large, clear window. It should have looked ugly and un-flyable, but there was an elegance in its design that belied its shape.

When they lifted off through the roof and over the water, they went up into the clouds and saw the stars rise in the west. The city glittered behind them like a friend wishing them a safe journey. A whale jumped beneath them, and John hands rested gently on the controls while a small smile spread across his face, and David finally understood.

"I feel what you feel here," David said, his eyes closed for a moment of joy.

"What?"

"Here, when I'm here with you, I feel what you feel," David said, glancing at John.

And his brother, who was never patient when he didn't understand something, cocked an eyebrow. "What are you talking about?"

"Flying feels different."

John wasn't having it. "Flying feels like flying."

"No." David would insist until he understood. "Flying to me, it takes me from place to place. Flying here, right now, feels like freedom."

The sea slipped past beneath them as they pushed through the air, barely able to tell they were there.

"Meeting Nicole felt like this," David said, for no particular reason. "Like catching the perfect wave and having it crest just right, and suddenly being in the barrel, you know? When time stretched out and it felt like you were the only thing in the world besides the water and the rush and the thrill."

Suddenly—so suddenly—they were on a familiar beach, puddle jumper nowhere in sight. A pair of boards in their hands and the waves breaking cleanly off shore.

The transition should have surprised them, but all John did was ask, "You still surf?"

David looked down at the board he was carrying, a replica of the ones he and John had commissioned that summer in California. "No."

"You miss it?"

David looked at his brother. "All the time."

So they ran for the water and paddled out together against the southern current, pulling themselves to the place between the break and the horizon, where water swelled and silence pulsed. It sounded like Atlantis.

* * *

David awoke from his dream gracefully two hours before he was to meet Dr. Keller to go over the results of his test last night. So he went alone to the mess hall and sat near the window, looking out at the dark, angry ocean when Colonel Carter finished grabbing the food she needed.

"May I join you?" she asked, surprising David out of his surf-filled memory.

"Please," he said, nodding to the empty space in front of him. Even though she wore the uniform, her military title didn't seem as fitting as 'Doctor.' This brilliant, beautiful woman's eyes never stopped assessing the room, as if she was actively plotting ways to make the food line more efficient or force the two marines in the corner to be more sociable.

"You run an incredible city," he said, sincerity infecting the words he hadn't planned to say.

That made her stop looking anywhere but him for just a second, all of her attention zeroed in on him for one burning moment. "Thank you, but it was running well before I arrived."

Yes, it had been, under the care of civilian Dr. Elizabeth Weir, who gave her life three times for the city. Locked herself up in stasis for ten thousand years for this city. People here didn't mention her around David, and he never deliberately asked about the woman that brought his brother here.

"When I took over my father's company," David said, surprising himself again, "our partners glanced at one another with exceptionally blank looks as I walked by, despite the fact that I had run my own projects for four years, and worked at a large corporation for five years before that."

She grinned wryly. "My dad was a colonel in the Air Force when I joined the academy. The looks I received were less blank and more blatantly scathing."

"I imagine that being smarter than everyone else didn't endear you to them either," he said, taking a bite of oddly colored eggs.

"Not exactly," she said with a smile, and David had to wonder what kind of woman Elizabeth Weir had been to make even someone like the colonel feel overshadowed. After all, Dr. Carter's legends were even greater than John's, and David sometimes wished he were her confidant, just to hear her side of those stories.

A soundless voice in the back of his head spoke up—a sudden flood of knowledge:

_She helped defeat the greatest enemies her people had ever known. She watched her best friends die for her and her cause. Saw beauty you can't imagine on planets you never guessed were there. She blew up a sun, and dodged a black hole. Time-traveled, and met many versions of herself—some she wasn't very proud to know. She watched a good, smart species come to extinction, and reverse engineered the technology of the people who created the stargate. She played with numbers and found the key to turning on the defense system for the Taur'i. She watched her best friend ascend. Saw him lose his wife. Helped him enact revenge. She's been kidnapped, shot, and abandoned. She trapped a race in time, and led her people to here at last. _

But this extraordinary woman had no ring on her left hand, no personal photographs in her office. She was a hero a dozen times over, and a secret one at that. A genius and a warrior, who had given up too much to save the people who would never know it. Her legacy was in every medical field, every technological jump that companies couldn't explain, and her reward were little medals she never actually wore that were cited for made-up heroics.

"You've given up a lot to be here," David said suddenly, needing somehow to express this in the quiet of early morning, when no one else was listening and the colonel was least on guard.

"Everyone has." She didn't sound bitter, and it was true, of course. They'd given up homes in exchange for secrets and challenges— challenges John hadn't even known he was after.

"Thank you," David said, holding her eyes solidly before returning to his food and a quiet breakfast.

She paused—fork tapping against her plate. "Your brother's given up a lot to be here, too."

But that was one of the rare times Samantha Carter was wrong.

"John gave up everything before he came here." He gave it up in Afghanistan, during a flight he shouldn't have taken to save a woman who died anyway. And John would never forgive himself for that failure. "Coming here gave him something back."

"You're talking about that black mark on his record," Carter said, eyes narrowing, and suddenly Ronon's warning came back to him, and it occurred to David that his quiet, introspective brother wouldn't have told anyone about Rebecca or Afghanistan or why he'd been shipped to the bottom of the world.

"I'm talking about Atlantis," David said, redirecting the conversation. "And the way the city talks to him."

"Talks to him?" she asked curiously, but neither fear nor disbelief flickered across her face. "In the dreams?"

"No, everywhere," David said, watching her carefully.

"How does it talk to him?" she asked, the scientist taking over so thoroughly it was like a physical transformation.

David told her of walking through these halls with John, of sitting on the edge of the ocean while the city lit up around them and whispered to David. About the way John could wave a hand in those dreams and entire walls would shift to give him more room. The way the city answered his wishes. David told her about hearing John's memories, and about just now, when the city told him about her.

And this woman, this beautiful brilliant woman who figured out the science of wormholes and had stepped onto hundreds of alien planets, listened and believed.

"That seems like more than what we observed when you were sleeping," she said, clearly ready to start another test.

"Atlantis loves that you're here," David said, and her bubbling energy instantly simmered into curiosity, the way he knew it would. It was clear how little acknowledgement she got. "You were like this unexpected gift one day, after a long, sad period. The fact that my brother respects you made it feel like it could be whole again."

She was curious. "The city?"

David was surprised she didn't know. "Yes."

"This isn't a normal amount of influence you're experiencing."

But that was a lie, and they both knew it. The city made David like Dr. McKay instantly, and trust Dr. Carter. It showed him that Ronon associated John with safety, and would jump into space beside him if he asked. It made him respect Teyla before they were even introduced, and know that she viewed his brother as a leader of men and the one true hope for her people. He knew that Lorne was stable and protective of John. He knew what his brother meant to this place that was alone for so long, that he was a heartbeat in its center.

"You're different," David said with quiet confidence. "The city doesn't treat you like the others."

That surprised her. "I don't have the gene, if that's what you mean."

"No. This isn't your home. As much as you love it here, you're not going to stay."

"No one's going to stay forever," Samantha Carter said, and she really believed that.

"They want to," David said. "Miko and Zalenka and McKay and my brother."

Dr. Carter shook her head.

"You saw it with your own eyes," David said, turning toward the large window overlooking the sea. "They didn't fit on Earth any more, certainly not in a windowless base under a mountain. They've lived too long by the sea."

It took the colonel more than a few seconds to gather her thoughts and wits. "The city told you that, too?"

"Yes."

"This isn't okay."

"Where's the line?" David asked. "Where's the line between turning on lights and having a spaceship respond to my thoughts and something dangerous?"

"About here," Carter said, nodding for him to stand, which he did to be on eye level with her.

"Atlantis wants me here for some reason," David said, sad that he couldn't convey the peace he felt at that moment to her. "I don't know why, but I'm going to keep trying, and I think this has something to do with it."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

Rodney McKay was strange in several ways. He was strange in his hostility, stranger still in his hospitality. Strange in his devotion and strange in his drive. He was a self-professed egotist with no time for people who weren't him. Except his loyalty to his team and this city was unshakeable.

"Everyone out here is so passionate," David had said that morning, watching Drs. Zelenka and Houseloff argue about a propulsion system so loudly that many put in headphones to block them out.

"Well, you don't travel across galaxies to do something you're apathetic about," Dr. McKay had practically sneered.

No, David supposed people wouldn't do that. He hadn't. He himself had come for family and life and being the good brother all over again.

"What's really wrong with my brother?" David asked McKay quietly in his lab that evening when the rest of the city had fallen asleep.

"What? You know what's wrong with him. He won't wake up." Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay was also strange in the way he lied.

"You wouldn't have brought me here if that were the only problem." David had now spent enough time in this foreign, floating city to know that people were routinely shot at, knocked out, and killed. They were hurting and wounded and never seen from again. But no one else had a sibling in this city trying to make them well again.

"Your internet searches indicated that you may have discovered something about his situation, and Dr. Keller felt that—"

"You requested my presence here," David said with quiet, unfounded confidence. "The others could have thought of it, but you're the one who brought me here. Why?"

McKay just grumbled and grumped about Sheppards and insights and finally said, "He wasn't in a coma when we first contacted you. He was—well, there was an accident. He touched something ancient in my lab and then starting babbling and passing out, and he just kept saying your name."

"So you brought me here because he asked for me?"

"No. No. Even if—We wouldn't have been able to tell you about the Stargate." He looked guilty and sad about that fact, and David had the strange thought that he seemed like half of himself without John beside him. "We brought you here because Atlantis told us to."

He didn't look like he was kidding.

* * *

It was quiet, in John's mind that night, which wasn't always the case. Sometimes there were whales or birds. Sometimes systems whirred around them. But on the balcony adjacent to the atrium, it was quiet as the brothers overlooked the silver ocean.

David hadn't left John's head after the usual number of hours, so the brothers relaxed in the large, soft lay-z-boys that John conjured up with his mind.

"How do you control all this?" David asked, waving vaguely as the sea and the city.

John shrugged, taking a sip of his beer. "One of those things."

"One of what things?" David asked, because half answers were out of style.

"ATA things. I can control things with my mind," John said with a grin. "Like a jedi."

"You are such a geek."

"People out here don't mind that. One benefit to being in a city full of nerdy scientists is never ending _Dr. Who _discussions."

Everyone had been a misfit before they came here: too smart to fit in, too adventurous to be nerdy, too full of the restless excitement that John had in spades to stand still. It was a city of people on the edge of their toes, and that was why, even with the option, so few went home again.

David knew that, accepted that, wished it didn't mean his brother had to live across the universe, but still: "It's good that people are here. I think Atlantis was lonely."

"You're anthropomorphizing a city," John pointed out, raising an eyebrow.

David smiled. "Who doesn't?"

John beamed. "She is great, isn't she?"

"One of the first rules in the very large list I was given was to report any sign of alien influence, but no one thinks twice of the way life signs detectors come out of the wall, and rooms brighten when you're reading, and windows open when its hot," David said.

John shrugged. "It's Atlantis."

"Most cities don't make you feel warm when you talk about it, and most cities wouldn't cause almost insane levels of loyalty in three doctors and an Air Force major that would lead them to break the direct line of command."

"She was worth it," John said, affectionately patting the wall, as if it were perfectly fine that four of the most brilliant people in the world had made a conscious, purposeful choice to compromise their careers for this city. To risk their lives to keep it from being torn apart.

They were all like that, the ones in the first expedition. And maybe all the others as well. The ones who came alive here, under foreign stars. Loyal. Fierce. Protective.

"I'm glad you found this place," Dave said, shaking his head to himself. "I miss you. I love you. But I can't imagine you sitting at my desk instead of here."

"But I'm not really here," John said, sounding sad for the first time. "I'm in my head."

"You'll be out as soon as you figure out what you need to do."

"If Rodney doesn't know how to fix this, no one does." This place gave John friendships like that, ones that meant they knew the world would be a better place if the other one was in it.

"You may not be an astrophysicist, but you have a way of making the world conform to the way you think it ought to be," David said, thinking of Teyla's too true statement. Because this had been the brother that made calculus and physics and aeronautical engineering seem like hobbies or little toy trains, easily broken apart and reformed as what he needed. Numbers did what John wanted them to, if he looked at them long enough.

"I can't control the world," John said, emotion leaking into the easy words, and David could imagine the faces flashing before his eyes.

_He killed men in my halls_, Atlantis said in the back of David's mind. _Protecting his family and us. Climbed through my corridors and never talked about it again. He has killed many_.

Which shouldn't have been such a surprise to David, who knew his brother lived and worked in war-zones. Knew his brother flew helicopters that weren't just filled with medical supplies, but this darkness in his brother was crushingly heavy, and never shared.

It had been ten years, really, since they were anything more than acquaintances, and in that time John had found a way to channel his drive and recklessness through his need to protect everyone all the time. Because now he was a leader. For a moment, David wished he could have seen the beginning of this leg of his brother's life, when a couple hundred men and women suddenly became his responsibility. He had probably thrived. He had probably done more damage to himself than he would ever admit.

"Dad would be proud of you," David said with certainty.

This was the man he had wanted his youngest son to become. Not the killer, certainly, though that probably wouldn't have bothered him. Patrick Sheppard had built a utilities empire with an inheritance he could have squandered, and called it the American Dream: to earn the respect his family name already afforded him. He said he wanted John to become president, but really he had just wanted him to matter. To drive himself to great things instead of lounging on his genius and charm. Yes, their father would have been proud to see his son the Colonel, not for his rank, but for the hundreds of people who looked to him with respect and admiration. Their father would have been proud, even if John wasn't.

But they were a thousand light years from Patrick Sheppard's respectable grave and sprawling empire, sitting on a city that was also a ship and a home. So when John broke their silence, it was like the creaking of an old, familiar rocking chair, and David was not surprised.

"I miss Mom."

David nodded once, twice, and forced the words out: "Me, too."

She would have loved this place, laughed with delight at the little metal doodads that lit up around her sons and the doors that opened with a thought. She would have wanted them to sit in the puddle jumpers at dusk and watch the city glow. She had loved beauty and history and family.

"It would have driven her nuts if she hadn't had the gene," David said, and John smiled.

"Yeah, it would have."

The running theory about their gene was that it came from both sides, at least marginally, and maybe that was true, but both brothers knew whom John, with his stronger gene, took after most, and it wasn't their mother.

"Rebecca would have loved the city, too," David said after a pause.

John, for all his stoicism and growth and black wristbands, stilled. "I know."

But she was gone. Dead. David had a wife of his own now, a daughter, too, and John had a city and a galaxy. And the past was a long time ago.

* * *

They spent another day together in that dream, and both finally accepted that David wasn't leaving any time soon and adapted as best they could. The city was so much more potent here in John's head, and it pushed David.

The city loved John like David loved his daughter—protectively, fiercely, pridefully. The way all of the people on the base loved John, which was so obvious just from the looks that David himself received. And Atlantis wanted John to be whole.

"No one talks about Dr. Weir in front of me," David began as they sat on the west pier of Atlantis as sundown.

"Probably because she's dead," he said stiffly, giving his brother a narrow look.

"No." David decided it was best to ignore John's lack of interest and continue on as he looked out over the ocean. "They talk about her all the time except when they notice I'm there."

"And?" John asked as if he were stupid.

"And who was she?"

"The original leader of the expedition." Trying to be obstinate. But David had learned patience.

"Who was she to you?"

John's whole face darkened. "What do you care about a woman you never met?"

"They say you were friends." David tried so hard not to sound like a mushy girl, but John's disdainful look suggested he wasn't quite up to task. "I know she was the one that talked you into coming here."

"She was a negotiator for the UN. She was good at stuff like that." John had his own gift for conversation: giving away just enough that he never had to tell any more. But it was a brother's right to ignore polite boundaries.

"I think you loved her."

John's hands clenched. "I didn't—We weren't-"

"Oh, I know," David said, waving a hand to brush aside the unfinished implications. "That's the part the botanists find so damn romantic."

"The botanists?"

"They are a font of information."

"I know that. You shouldn't."

"I'm a Sheppard, John," he said with a grin, glancing at him. "People are my forte."

The waves kept breaking and stars David had never seen began to blink to life above them—thousands of stars despite the bright light of Atlantis around them—burning and singing and waiting for this talk.

"I left her behind," John said suddenly. "We were—There was this enemy, and–" The story poured out—about the Asurans and nanites and technology that shouldn't exist. But then John was on a roll, and letting David know about Kolya and Phebus and suicide missions when he realized he would die for these people. The stories he told were the threads that wove together the myth of Weir and Sheppard, and the gossip-filled stories were surprisingly close to the truth, and yet so far from the whole story. The story of two people who would not compromise their mission by letting themselves acknowledge what everyone already saw.

Behind the words, there was a pulsing undercurrent in John's voice that he would never say aloud—_I failed her, I lost her, I killed her, I miss her. _It sounded like the waves, breaking against the shields of Atlantis._ I can't make it better_.

David had seen John fall in love before. Three times, in fact. Once with a girl in high school who went to Vanderbilt while he went to Stanford; once with the woman who became his wife.

The third time was Rebecca. He'd fallen in love with someone he really liked. Liked enough to be friends with, to joke with, to fake an injury so he'd get the chance to see her in the infirmary, from the stories she told. She'd had his spirit and his joy for life. They'd come home once when they were on leave once and raced bikes until John just pulled her to him and kissed her with their matching smiles.

David had broken up with his girlfriend the week after that trip, knowing then that what he felt was not enough. Not by half.

John and Rebecca had met in the Air Force, where she worked as a medic because she had wanted to do something for her country. Her father worked at the pentagon, her mother at a think tank.

When John had come home from Afghanistan with that scar on the back of his wrist from a piece of shrapnel and an aborted court martial on his record that he could not have cared less about, he had looked like he did now: eyes burning with so much emotion that he was nearly bursting. Full of the agonized wish that it had been him who died instead.

He never leaves a man behind, everyone said, but David knew—knew so completely that it hurt—that John remembered every person for whom that motto had failed. The Rebecca Hollands and the Aidan Fords and Elizabeth Weirs.

"Why haven't you told them about Rebecca?"

"I don't talk about it," he said, twisting that damned wristband.

"She died, John." If Dave were a different man he would have screamed it, instead of sounding so devastated. "She died in front of you, and Dad said she wasn't worth it. I know. I know he said worse. He was wrong. We were wrong. He regretted it."

John didn't say anything, so David kept going.

"And I'm sorry I didn't stick up for you," David said. "I was stupid and petty when I should have been looking out for you."

"I never expected you to."

"You should have! And I should have, too. But you had never needed me before." David shook his head. "And after that, you were gone. Shipped to the middle of the Arctic Circle, where you shuttled scientists to bases and didn't ask questions, and I didn't even get an e-mail, because caring wasn't something I deserved from you anymore."

John looked a mix of annoyed and mad. "I didn't think you wanted to hear from me."

"You're my brother," David said, wondering how John could have imagined he would not want to hear from him. "It would have been nice to know you weren't dead."

John's eyes grew dark and angry.

David pressed on. "And now I find out that not only did you leave, you didn't think you were coming back. You left everything you knew except for a book you couldn't even read about war and peace."

"I also brought a football game," John said in that uniquely annoying I'm-pretending-to-be-oblivious tone.

Silence stretched, and David, who was always the more patient brother, just let it curl around them, between them, binding them.

"I needed to go," John said.

"I know that now," David agreed. He knew that in a very basic part of himself. "You needed to come here. But all I knew then was that we didn't hear from you for a year. Not when I got married. Not when my daughter was born. I didn't know what to think except that you liked living in a warzone more than coming home for Christmas. Liked shooting strangers more than answering e-mail about Dad getting sick."

There had been a dozen possible places where the Air Force could have shipped John that required the silence they had endured, and all of them were not good. David had wondered a dozen times why his brother didn't just quit. He had enough money, if he wanted it. He had a job, if he wanted it.

"I liked Antarctica." John sounded honest. "It was quiet and cold and no one was shooting at me."

He liked it because he didn't have to think about Mitch or Dex or Rebecca or the dozens of buddies he lost.

"You liked it because it was the end of the world, and you could cut yourself off."

"I didn't cut myself off—"

"Yes, you did, and you still are," David said, because he finally understood and it felt like a giant light glowing brighter inside him. "I was wrong. I was wrong about you running away to avoid boredom. You run away from _thought_. Introspection. You hate boredom because it gives you time to think, to remember."

"I remember."

"You remember the wrong things," David said, so damned sad it felt like it was going to break him. "Nothing beyond the pain of Rebecca and Mom and Dr. Weir and Lt. Ford and all the people whom you feel you failed."

His brother, so cool and composed most days, flinched. "I did fail them."

"So do better next time. Don't kill yourself."

John rolled his eyes. "I'm not killing myself."

"You're doing a damned good impression of it, then."

"Don't."

"Don't what? Tell the truth? You haven't even mentioned Rebecca to these people. You haven't mentioned the ring you bought her or the scar you got trying to save her." David was ready to start yelling. "There's a tally of the number of times you've gone on suicide missions for these people. They compare the number of times you've saved them and call you their hero and have no idea that you're really trying to die."

"I'm not just trying to die!" John yelled the last word in exasperation, jerking his hands forward as if wanting to strangle David, who stood his ground. "I'm trying to make sure _they _don't. There are about a thousand things in this galaxy that are trying to kill them, and my job is to stop that from happening. They're my responsibility, and I can't keep letting them down."

The world moved around them: they were an airshaft watching a Wraith drain a man of life, and John put a bullet through his heart; they were looking at Rodney say that Gaul wasn't coming back; they were running out of a helicopter toward Rebecca's bloody body, dragging the other injured soldiers; they were being pulled away from a room full of frozen people, a woman begging them to go; they were watching a young black man with a dead eye run away; and they were standing on the other side of a stargate, staring out at the ruins of a world, knowing it was their fault it was destroyed. They were sitting in a jumper with Teyla, listening to the screams of men and women as the Wraith ships flew overhead, knowing it was their fault they were awoken, knowing they couldn't do more.

And for the first time, when they shifted back to Atlantis, John just looked exhausted and sad and hollow.

"John," David said, but the rest of the sentence died somewhere between his heart and mouth.

John's voice was quiet, broken. "I'm the guy. The one who should stop it, instead of bringing more threats."

David was forty-two years old and tired beyond reason. "How long will you chase this guilt, John?"

John just shook his head and glared.

"As long as you chased the guilt of what happened to Mom?" David asked. "The guilt of cancer, the guilt of enemy fire for Rebecca. The guilt that burned your first marriage and keeps you pushing these people—this family you created here—away. You're too old for this, John. Too old to let things like this control your life."

"You're one to talk."

"I am. Because I have a family now, John. A company I love. Work I support. Friends who know me. I'm done running. I've been done for a long time." He reached out and put his hand on John's wrist. "Be done, too."


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note**: Hi, all. Thank you so much for your patience with me finishing this story. This is the place where I wanted to take it, but I hit a wall and just wasn't sure how people would react. At the same time, this was the closing image that I most wanted when I started this story. It's the reason why, if you look back, for the anachronisms… well, you'll just see. Please let me know your thoughts. - Miranda

* * *

**Chapter 7**

It was another full day in the empty Atlantis of John's mind before David fully accepted that he would not be waking up as he had other times, and that made him wonder, "What happens here when I leave?"

John, who was twisting in a desk chair overlooking the Stargate, paused. "Nothing. You just leave."

"Do I fade slowly or disappear suddenly?" It was the details David needed to keep him grounded, thinking, moving.

John kicked against the ground, back to twisting. "Suddenly."

"And you weren't worried the first time?" David asked, craning his neck around to address his brother.

"You were okay," John said, resting again, his gaze on the 'gate.

"You didn't know that." The curiosity David felt about being trapped in this empty space was growing rapidly. There was so little he could control here. Not even the clothes that appeared—the casual khaki slacks and grey sweater that he always wore here.

John turned, slouching gracefully in the chair, his Atlantis uniform of black cargo pants, grey shirt, and that black wrist band making him look every inch the disgruntled soldier that he was. David wondered what it said about his brother that he was armed in his dreams. Probably nothing good. Probably everything to do with the whispers David heard about Michael and Kolya and a nuclear bomb that he would fly into the enemy to save the city.

"Atlantis said you were okay," John said, leaning the chair back to its furthest possible angle.

David put his hands in his pockets, pressing his thumb nail against his pointer finger. "That's creepy, John."

"You want to know what's really creepy?" John asked, standing and joining him by the rail. "You aren't even really here."

"We've already talked about that," said David, just a moment away from irritation. "The IOA and General O'Neill—"

"Yeah, I've thought about that, and you're wrong." John turned to look at him, resting his hip against the metal rail, casual and tense at once. "You said Carter was here, and Teyla was in the gateroom. The timeline's wrong."

And because this was a dream his brother had been stuck in for a long time, and maybe John was just going crazy, David said, "I'm real."

"I know. That's why it took so long to realize everything else wasn't." John crossed his arms, tucking his wrist-gaurded hand against his chest. "That's why I didn't let you leave this time."

Let him leave? "You can control if I wake up?"

John shrugged. "Apparently."

That would have been nice to know.

"So why don't you come out now," John said loudly, nearly yelling as he turned around the empty room, seemingly addressing the ceiling. "Who are you? Another mist planet? A people's long-dead last hope for repopulation?"

The weirdest part of all of this—the part that creeped up David's legs, burrowing in his throat—was that David didn't doubt his brother for a moment. In this place of metal and light and singing, beautiful oceans, John was at home. He recognized when a single panel was out of line as he walked down the corridors. He could feel flaws in the puddlejumpers navigation controls before anything should up on the monitors. If he said this wasn't real, he was probably right. That was why both men were prepared when the skyline and the room and the floor itself faded to white and a single woman dressed in a pale green dress stepped forth from the light.

"Hello, brothers Sheppard." She had clear blue eyes and spoke carefully, as if pulling sounds together was novel. Framed by long, light brown hair, her face was perfectly symmetrical with a vaguely ethnic skin tone. She had to be about thirty, but those eyes looked hardened, alien, and kept her perfect face from being beautiful.

"Hello," David said, standing in this white void and needing to hear his own voice.

"It's about time." John was tense, his hands now carefully at his sides, beside his gun.

She tilted her head in acknowledgement before twisting slightly to face David. "I am grateful you joined us."

David shook his head, a few feet from a woman whose face was perfect and eyes were ancient. "I came just wanted answers."

Her smile was breathtaking in its ease. "_Conozco_."

This nebulous, empty space was warm and safe, and the use of a foreign word didn't phase Dave. He began to idly wonder about the power of this woman that she could erase his fear and worry so thoroughly, when he put together a thought like the final piece of a puzzle: "You brought me here. To John's dreams."

"I opened a path." She had perfect posture and no regret infused her voice.

"Are you an Ancient?" David asked, and John scoffed, muttering about how typical that would be.

She shook her head. "I am an Atlantean subroutine."

"Oh, of course. A subroutine," John said, equal parts condescending and mocking, as if he could not feel this woman's good intentions rippling through him the way David did. He sounded, actually, a lot like Dr. McKay during a fit of temper. It was amusing to see.

"Why did you reach out to me?" David felt as overwhelmed as he had when he sat in his father's study after the funeral, alone and without a task to plan for the first time since the death, weighed down by the vast possibility of options. "Why build this dream?"

"When the city is under attack, there are four protocols," she said evenly. "This is the third."

"You've got to be kidding me," John muttered, rolling his eyes. His casual annoyance with strange non-people entering and altering his life was disconcerting. David had known the dangers of this place for weeks, and he should have expected his brother's blasé attitude—everyone said he raced toward danger the way he used to hunt for adventure when they were kids—, but to be so informal with a being who could trap him in an empty version of his home was bordering on ridiculous.

"How was bringing me here part of a protocol?" David asked, redirecting the conversation.

"You are kin," she said, still enunciating ever so delicately. "Family to Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard."

"That hasn't meant anything to him in a long time," David said, his soft, honest gaze focused on the woman.

"You're my brother," John said, his brows drawn together. "You're family."

"I'm someone you grew up with," David told him, not even angry about this anymore. "Your family is a city full of scientists and soldiers whom you fight for and protect." Two aliens, a scientist, a doctor, and a platoon of marines who would take on two galaxies to help him wake up.

"You're the only family I have left," John said. "Whether you want me or not."

Which was too close to the heart of their biggest arguments to fight over now, in this nothingness. David had always wanted John in his life. He'd spent what felt like his entire childhood chasing after his ever-changing brother. It was John who pushed and pushed until he was free of the family he didn't want, flying above them, faster and faster until he couldn't hear them anymore. But maybe that was wrong. Maybe John was just so eager and energetic and different that he had never felt like he fit in. Maybe he'd spent his life as lonely as David ever had.

The subroutine's pale blue eyes watched them, glinting like metal. She shook her head briefly, brown hair waving as she stepped back. "You are bound."

"I'd like some more specifics," John said bitterly, a commander who wanted options, information. He sounded like their father in a negotiations meeting just before he crushed the vendors expectations of an easy sell.

"Protocol three creates a dreamscape," she said, unruffled by John's intimidating gaze-their father's eyes in their mother's face.

There was a bright light, and then they were back in the Atlantis dining hall, with Teyla and Ronon eating together, Dr. Carter off to the side catching with an Argentinean Botanist named Garcia. Lorne was in the corner talking to the guys on kitchen duty who were stirring the pot of blue soup, smirking. There were a dozen others there, relaxing, eating, going about their average day.

"It is a land of consciousness in a familiar setting," she said, looking over the people. Then she turned to John. "You saw a version on an Alteran ship."

John's whole face was tense. "They died thinking that was real."

"Their subroutine failed to bring an outside influence," she said calmly, like that made sense. "It remained simply a place to preserve the minds of those attacked until the threat was neutralized."

"But this," David said, spinning in a circle in the warm, metal mess hall, "was real. The people and their interactions. John's dream was the dreamscape, right?"

"No, Dave," John said, steady and solid and oddly sympathetic despite never breaking eye contact with the woman. "They showed you the people I worked with, but it was in your head, too."

"They are real, in that their minds are connected, but their physical selves were not there."

"But why?" David asked, feeling like he'd been sucker punched by this lithe, distant lady. "Why bring me into it?"

"Protocol three requires outside intervention. Your gift for understanding people was necessary," the woman said, touching David lightly on the temple, and then there was a sudden rush of noise so loud it sounded like an explosion. A few deep breaths, and the noise calmed enough to transform into a single thread—a sort of drumming beckoning him toward Ronon. So David looked at the tall man with powerful muscles and dirty hair and a history so painful it ached even buried deep under his skin. It burned in him and drove him on.

"That's not right," John cut in, brutally wrenching David from the scene that faded away, leaving them back in the white space. "You used him."

"I invited him to meet those you worked with. He accepted."

David was disoriented enough that it took him a moment to try to understand the implications. "My involvement changed nothing. I didn't change those people."

They weren't even real.

"You needed to meet them in the dreamscape," she said, her wide eyes looking grieved as she addressed David, "because we could not bring you to the city. It is under attack, and our enemies have made the crew forget."

"No one could make me forget Atlantis," John said, clipped, because he had been banished from its halls once, Dave remembered. Kicked out and sent to Earth, a place he didn't think of as home anymore, and he had never been able to escape the dull ache in his chest that beckoned him back out into the stars.

The woman shook her head. "In your waking hours, you have. So we collected the minds of our children to this world, to let them remember in dreams. But your gift for finding falsities would not let us keep you in the normal protocol. We had to isolate you."

"That's not right!" David said, thinking of his brilliant, challenging brother and all the people he had already lost. To take him from his family again, after all his sacrifices already, was wrong. Evil.

"It was necessary," the woman said. "And bringing you ensured that he shared pieces of himself he hides from others."

Images flashes before them: John standing in full dress uniform while a man told him, "If it were up to me, you'd be kicked out altogether. But money speaks, so you'll keep your rank as long as you can stand the shame"; John at their dad's funeral, standing at the door and asking to be let in; his face the day his divorce came through, saying she was right; when he admitted that he missed Mom and trusted Dr. McKay to save his life; the day he'd finally talked about the men he'd killed in the halls of this city, the way his loyalty to it and its people made him scary.

"_You'll be great, Johnny boy," their father said, arm draped around his thirteen-year-old son's shoulders. "Don't let yourself be less." But John felt choked by that expectation, irritated by its weight._

David shook his head, staring off to the right, away from his brother. "You didn't need him to relive those memories."

The woman waved an arm, and the scenes faded back to the oblique whiteness. "He shows you how he sees himself, and he accepts only worlds in which those realities are faced."

"_You have any family, Shep?" a stocky guy in camo asked, chugging a beer in the sweltering heat of the dessert._

_John, looking younger and rebellious, just laughed. "None that want to claim me, Dex."_

David felt like a cold hand had wrapped around his heart. John could not believe that, could he? Believe that David had wanted him to leave. That their dad was right and it was good that John was gone. He couldn't.

"You reject realities meant to bring you joy," the woman told John calmly, as if that weren't the most cutting remark of all, and the truth of her assessment showed clearly on John's face, who was wound up and angry and refused to let her see it.

"Those things he thought you were," David said, sounding more hollow than he would have liked, "the mist and the last hope, they did this to him, too? Made him see what wasn't there?"

"Yes," she said. "And he rejected the world where his friends were alive and he was honored, but accepted the reality in which an enemy came back to life to kill him."

"Sounds like a lot of fun, John," David muttered.

John tried to shrug casually. "It was a bit like Rambo."

"To preserve their relationship with Atlantis, we created a virtual reality to house the conciousnesses of the crew where they believed they had never left," the subroutine said. "But we could not risk you realizing it was false, as you had before, and disrupting the balance for the others. So we isolated you."

"And trapped my men."

"Preserved their memories," she repeated. "But removed your direct influence."

"By pretending he was in a coma?" David asked, anger boiling up in him. "Those people are scared for him. They don't know that it's fake. They think they're about to lose their leader, their friend. There's a desperation in the situation that you couldn't have meant to create."

"It keeps them from noticing the inaccuracies as well," the lady said, like that was worth it.

"So why bring me into it? That must have thrown a wrench in their collective storylines," David said bitterly, thinking of the way that the mess hall workers had looked at him with hope in their eyes, and the scientists admited that they weren't sure they would stay on Atlantis if Sheppard was gone. He protects us, they all said. Sacrificed and fought for us. We need him, they said. He love him.

"They forget Atlantis when they wake," the woman told David, turning to the left, where the images of the crew painted across the white expanse-Lorne and his marines, the biologists, the herbologists with their trees, the teams who stood in groups of four and five, weapons at the ready and compassion in their faces. A sense of longing and loss settled over David that he knew was not his own. It was Atlantis, mourning. "But you, David Sheppard, as an un-adjusted outsider—will remember."

"Un-adjusted? Who adjusted everyone else?" asked David, swallowing over the emotion that Atlantis shared.

"Enemies," she said succinctly. "The ones who made John Sheppard forget."

"_You _made me forget," John bit out.

The lady shook her head. "No. You were all made to forget Atlantis by outsiders. This was the only place we could bring your brother to learn about you, because your inability to accept the dreamscape forced us to isolate you."

David fumed. "That's a pretty shitty thing to do."

"It's a very Ancient thing to do," John muttered.

"The computer took the steps necessary to avoid the hostile takeover of Atlantis." She looked scary, in that moment, like a guard dog at the end of its leash.

"No one's trying to take over the city," John said. "It's safe and sound in San Francisco Bay."

Well, even in the midst of a bright white void and an ancient, talking subroutine that looked like a lady, that stuck out to David. He turned to his brother. "San Francisco Bay?"

"There was a battle. Hostile wraith." John waved a hand, like that was common. "Long story."

The subroutine looked at him seriously. "And after stopping that threat, they tried to take the city from you."

John didn't seem eager to say anymore, so it was David who asked, "Who?"

"My bosses," John said flatly.

"They wanted a new crew," the lady said, looking upset. "As if the city could replace you."

David thought of Dr. Elizabeth Weir, imagined her standing on the balcony outside her office, looking out over the city she had ruled. The pretty woman who had ended wars with her words and resolve, and how she kept this beautiful, delicate city from falling. He thought of Dr. Samantha Carter and Major Evan Lorne, of Rodney McKay and Dr. Zalenka unlocking the past. He thought of his brother and the dozens of men and women who had agreed to jump into another galaxy with no proof they would be able to return.

"You've replaced us before," John said, his voice tough and thick. "You had Becket and Ford and Elizabeth, and you let them die. Why should I be different?"

"_Because_ we lost Dr. Becket and Ford and Elizabeth Weir," the woman said patiently. "Because the rest of our children will not go back without you, once they remember."

"_We would have died without Commander Sheppard." "Colonel Sheppard saved our lives." "He will always come back for us." "He is my leader." _The words of all the men and women who lived there—lived for him—echoed through the blank space.

"No," John said, shaking his head and waving an arm, as if that would dispel the chorus of voices around him. "That's not right."

"You are their leader," the woman said calmly.

"I shouldn't be!" John snapped, leaning forward. "I should be—"

The lady tilted her head to the side. "Dead?"

David's eyes narrowed, watching the conversation carefully.

"Maybe," said John, his hazel eyes filled with the aching memory of those who went before him, and David reeled.

"You are not suicidal, John Sheppard. Your memories show pain, but not despair." And the environment shifted again.

_They were at that hospital where Mom died, John sitting in the waiting room with his head in his hands, silent and isolated while David made plans for the funeral and their father went back to work. John was in the desert, holding Rebecca's broken body. He was coming home to an empty house, Nancy's stuff packed and gone, a note taped to the fridge. He was watching Ford walk away, and seeing Kolya killed Meade and Putman. He was standing on David's porch as his brother asked if he was there for the money._

"You fight for family because you love them, and you don't want to lose any more," the lady said. "And they love you, too."

_Teyla was holding a baby, giving him John's name. McKay was on the edge of pier, joking about Arthur. John was trapped under a beam, sweating and broken and holding up a gun toward the ceiling, telling Ronon it was a pleasure to work with him, and hearnig Ronon echo the sentiment. Elizabeth was telling him about his promotion, smirking behind a plain metal cup of coffee, beaming with beauty and pride. Zalenka was telling John that he'd done well, a hand curled over his shoulder. Kusinagi was placing a thin, wrapped present next to John's hospital bed. Lorne was standing with him at the highest pier, silently enjoying the sunset, all of their people home and accounted for. Carson was stitching up John's eyebrow and assuring him his good looks would be intact. A bunch of marines were standing at attention as John limped past them, arm around Dr. Keller's shoulder._

_The people of a planet were throwing a party around a campfire with dancing and drinking, and John was watching it all with a kind of rueful smile._

"Your leaders were wrong to take you from us," the lady said as the last scene faded slowly, washing the colors back into white. "And your enemies were foolish to think they could make you forget forever."

_A woman in black leather was walking around the silent Altantis gateroom and no lights were turning on. Her fury was palpable, and people rushed around to hurry their projects._

"Slaves and rulers have entered our halls," the subroutine said. "Warriors and peacemakers. Sacrificing lifetimes to a battle they could have ignored. Most burdened with grief and guilt and the feeling that they are imbued with a purpose not yet fulfilled.

"Yet when you touched the city, John Sheppard, and Atlantis awoke from slumber, she loved you unlike any before, for you joined her in her loneliness and brought with you companions to fill her halls."

"I killed in her halls," John said. "I felt her grief."

The woman turned to the side, where David watched images of John running through corridors, gun in hand, saw scientists following him, saw ships shooting as they flew overhead, saw the shield of the stargate light up from impacts once, trice, too many times.

"It was necessary," the lady said.

John looked bitter and angry and a bit self-loathing, and David, for all his age and wisdom, smashed down the emotion welling in his throat.

"You found Atlantis worth protecting, worth staying," she said.

The area around them shifted, morphing into a familiar scene.

_The image of their ranch in North Carolina appeared around them, where two young boys laid in sleeping bags under the stars. It had been their mother's idea, a night outdoors, and she'd rolled out a huge blanket and sleeping bags with soft pillows that were ruined the next day, and they fell asleep on the grass together. _

_A six-year-old John pointed up at Orion and said, "That's my favorite one."_

"_There's a lot more," David had said reasonably for a ten year old. "You don't have to pick just one." And in John's head, David's words echoed fiercely: Run. Run and see it all. Don't ever stop."_

"I never meant for you to run away," David said quietly, standing in the empty field.

"He was running to a home he did not know he longed for," the woman said evenly. "Like all the children of the stars do."

There was a man with a gold symbol etched in his forehead stepping through a hole in a wall. Ronon, his legs weary, resting in a cave as he vowed to live. Teyla as a young girl sprinting through a village. A woman with shrewd eyes and black hair in pigtails, trailing after a brown-haired man with glasses through ruins. There was Samantha Carter and Rodney McKay both scribbling symbols on paper too fast to read. A brown haired man with blue eyes flying too fast toward a enemy ship. There was a general at a desk, and men and women passing through these halls. Hundreds of people on different worlds. Hundreds who kept looking at the circle of light, and those who could not help but ask: where did it go? When would it be my turn to find out?

"But the people who have taken Atlantis and made you forget would destroy it," the lady said. "And David must stop them."

David turned abruptly. "Me?"

He didn't know how to shoot a gun or take back a city.

"You must make the crew remember Atlantis." She looked expectant, like this was a given, and any argument would be dismissed.

"How will I do that?" David asked, incredulous at the demand. "And where am I, if I haven't been in Atlantis?"

Once more the scene shifted, and suddenly he was looking at himself sleeping peacefully beside his wife. "We have been in a single dream, in a single night, since you first saw your brother."

So everything—him typing the Google search, the general's visit, the Deadalus—was all fake. How unsettling.

"All the people you met are alive. Those were their true consciousnesses, and they have forgotten. Make them remember," she said, like it was the easiest thing in the world.

David almost didn't want to say it, but he had to: "Those aren't easy memories for all of them."

"We belong in Pegasus," the subroutine said, clearly meaning both Atlantis and all the men and women whom David had met in her computerized dreamscape. She meant John. And before a few weeks ago—well, a few hours ago, if this was all a dream—David would have raised hell about that assumption. He would have grit his teeth and refused and demanded that his brother come back, come home, try to be less secretive and destructtive.

But now, David knew the truth. This woman—this subroutine—was right: Atlantis belonged in Pegasus, in the ocean without edge on a planet called New Lantea, where the whales sometimes went crazy and the sky turned purple just before dawn. Where there is a stargate at its heart, and a dozen allied planets that depend on it for friendship, for that selfless rush of people who go without question to those who seek aid.

The people belonged there, too, in a place with different constellations, where there were no myths of boys with melted wax wings because there they knew they could always do better, fly higher. They were a group of people who finally found a home and a family led by John Sheppard, who had never understood that he was born to lead. They were smart and brave and good, and they deserved a choice.

"Even if you got everyone to remember," John told the subroutine, "you can't make the US military change their mind about reassigning some of us."'

"This ship will go back to Pegasus with you," she said without a hint of emotion or doubt. "And all who want to join you."

Her conviction caused both brothers pause. It was impossible not to believe that she could make it happen, the way she spoke so confidently. It made John ask, "What are you a subroutine of?"

Her smile—still easy—had an edge to it.

"The Defense System," she said. "They turned us on by accident."

()()

The next day, a cold one in March, David Sheppard woke up with his arms around his wife, and kissed her good morning. He told her he loved her, and stayed home from work for no reason for the first time ever. He held his baby daughter, and had a picnic with them both in the middle a field where he and his brother used to sleep out as children, near the horses they both loved so much. He told them stories about growing up, about inventing constellations, and how much it hurt when his brother had left.

David took two weeks off, and bought a plane ticket to California, where he rented a car and wound through back roads until he found the little airstrip that didn't even have a website. There was an old hangar, and beside it an office that looked like a wooden trailer, with springy, hand-cut steps. He knocked four times, and waited until the white door swung in, and saw his brother for the first time in over a year in the real world.

"Dave?" John asked in confusion, aviator glasses on top of his head. "What are you doing here?"

David Sheppard smiled in the northern California sunlight, pride in his brother practically emanating off of him.

"I have a story to tell you," Dave said, "and then we're going on a road trip."

()()


End file.
